dreamitvfranchisesandhistoriesfandomcom-20200215-history
ITV TVS Television (based on Brad Jones' post-1993 vision)
This article is based on Brad Jones' TVS gallery on the Java website. ITV TVS Television (previously Television South (TVS)) is the holder of the ITV franchise for the South and Southeast of England The station was launched on 1 January 1982, and is owned and operated by ITV plc, under the licensee of ITV Broadcasting Limited. Television South plc. was one of several (but not all) ITV plc-owned regional companies to have its legal name changed on 29 December 2006, when it became ITV TVS Television Ltd. This company is, along with most other regional companies owned by ITV plc, listed on www.companieshouse.gov.uk as a "Dormant company". The company broadcasts to the region from the Hannington, Midhurst, Rowridge, Whitehawk Hill, Hastings, Heathfield, Tunbridge Wells, Bluebell Hill and Dover transmitters. The station also supplies its regional news service to viewers served by the Oxford transmitting station in the neighbouring ITV Central region. Includes map of coverage area and transmitter groups included. TVS operates from studios in Whiteley, Hampshire, producing regional news and current affairs programmes in addition to occasional networked productions for the ITV network. History Formation TVS was formed following discussions between television producer James Gatward, television executive Bob Southgate, who had previously worked at ITN, Thames Television, and journalist Martin Jackson to apply for the new "South and South-East" of England ITV 1980 franchise. Finance was provided by Barclays Bank and Charterhouse investment bank. This area was the most hotly contested with seven other applicants besides TVS and the incumbent, Southern Television. The Independent Broadcasting Authority had decided to change the area covered from the south to include the south east and included the Bluebell Hill transmitter, associated relays and the main relay at Tunbridge Wells which previously were covered by ITV's London contractors. To reflect this the contract area served by Southern Television, which was previously titled the South of England area was renamed South and South-East of England. To serve the new region better the IBA expected the successful applicant to operate separate facilities for both the south and the south-east, known as a dual-region, with new additional facilities to be built in the South East. Following submission of their application, TVS were anticipating that they would be forced into a shotgun marriage with Southern, but in the event TVS won outright against the seven other contenders since their plans for a better mix of programmes and greater investment were considered good enough to operate the franchise alone. This was the official line given by the IBA, but it was also considered that Southern's non-local ownership (the majority shareholders were companies based in London and Dundee) and their very conservative nature led to it being dropped in favour of the more interesting proposals made by TVS in their franchise application. By the start of 1981 a number of high-profile personalities had joined the station in preparation for the start of the new franchise: *Michael Blakstad, Ex Tomorrow's World, "Director of Programmes"; *Anna Home ex BBC children's, "Head of Children's and young people"; *Michael Rodd Head "Science and industry programmes"; *Herbert Chappell "Features, Education and Music" During 1981, TVS's ambitions were soon recognised for their desire to have a greater say in how ITV operated and its dismay on how it was being treated by the Big Five ITV companies, Thames Television, LWT, Central Independent Television, Yorkshire Television and Granada Television. The rationale was that the larger ITV companies should bear more of the production costs as their size enabled them to. This led to criticism in some quarters that the larger of the remaining 'regional' ITV companies, such as TVS, Anglia Television, STV, Tyne Tees Television and HTV, found it difficult to get network access for their major productions, and that they were left with softer non-primetime sectors, such as children's and religious television. Michael Blakstad, the Director of Programmes, claimed ITV needed a shake up as an advertiser, and viewers did not like contemplating the ITV nightly programme offering and were hoping the "Big Five" would welcome TVS with open arms as a chance to light up the schedules, as the only "occasional flash of excitement" appeared from LWT's The South Bank Show. Blakstad claimed none of TVS's £2 million worth of new programming had been accepted for networked transmission, and TVS was only invited to the monthly contractors meetings as observer only from May 1982. He also expressed doubts that Yorkshire Television may not give up its monopoly of networked science programmes. Blakstad stated " TVS was awarded the franchise to bring a catalyst to ITV, but the authority may have to help them get into the laboratory first" In the days before the start of the new franchise, the IBA made it clear that they were happy about the service changes, and were particularly impressed with TVS in connection with new programming for the ITV network, in areas in which the IBA wished for improvements, mainly children's and the sciences. TVS' aims were for a different line of programming in the early evening slots, to win back the 50,000 viewers they claimed were switching over to rivals, due to the poor service provided by Southern. TVS began broadcasting at 09.30 am on 1 January 1982. The new dual-regional station sprang to life with its new specially composed startup music – variously named but referred to in-house as TVS Gallop, accompanied by a programme menu and clock. Continuity announcer Malcolm Brown, previously an announcer at Granada, made the opening announcement: “Good morning. It's New Year's Day 1982, and this is Television South. TVS, the new independent television company that's proud to serve both the South and South East of England. To begin with, we bring in the new with for the first time our symbol which will soon become very familiar.” Following the first airing of the station's first ident, the first programme to air was a Coast to Coast special entitled Bring in the New, presented by Khalid Aziz. A number of presenters made the transition from Southern to TVS. All production staff were transferred as part of the then union agreements within ITV, that no technician should lose employment as a result of franchise changes. 200 staff were also recruited for the facilities at Gillingham and Maidstone, although a small number of these were made redundant after the company went on-air as the studios struggled to reach production capacity, restricted by TVS' limited access to the ITV network. Early life Prior to broadcasting, TVS refused to take on most of Southern's programme stock, except the arrangement to cover two Glyndebourne operas each year. With the advent of Channel 4 launched in November 1982, the operas' were shown on Channel 4. Houseparty was replaced by Not For Women Only which recognised changes in women's social patterns, while a new Saturday morning children's series No. 73 was also introduced, locally at first, before being networked Whitbread acquired a 20% stake in TVS from European ferries in April 1984, as the latter wished to concentrate its financial and management resources on the shipping and property sectors, but sold on the stake in November 1986. Lionel Ross financial director stated "We think that Television South remains a very good company but we carried out a review of our investments and decided to concentrate our energies elsewhere". In August 1984, Greg Dyke became TVS Director of Programmes. Dyke was brought in to rejuvenate the station, and started to move programming away from its original philosophy of niche arts and science programming, and began producing more entertainment programmes. In 1985 an agreement was reached with LWT, who required help to fill its schedules with appropriate, domestically-produced programming while not having to increase its budget. Thus TVS was able to get more of its programmes onto the ITV network slots, such as Bobby Davro on the Box, Catchphrase, C.A.T.S Eyes, Five Alive, Kelly's Eye, The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, Summertime Special and other light entertainment programmes. TVS retained its original philosophy for regional and children's programmes. By November 1986, the station became one of the most heavily criticised companies by the IBA over its programming. The criticisism mainly concerned the Southampton editions of Coast to coast while issues were raised over the quality of TVS's drama and light entertainment output. Its education shows were 'too didactic' while its religious output was branded as having 'barely discernible religious content'. Dyke accepted the IBA criticism, but highlighted that TVS had already begun remeding the issues and faults, with a new editor for its Southampton news operation, and a new head of religious output was brought in, along with a controller of drama, a first for TVS. Once again, TVS expressed their concern about its relationship with the Big Five ITV stations, and how they controlled the channel's output. In April 1987, Greg Dyke left TVS and returned to LWT. By TVS's fifth Birthday in 1987, its profits had grown 62% since 1981 to £14.4million, which was helped after TVS increased its share of programming for ITV network and growth in new business; warnings were made that inflation and cost was higher, but projected growth television operations would be around 7–8% during the rest of 1987. The end result was that the accounts revealed TVS had become bigger than Yorkshire Television in terms of advertising revenue, and was quickly catching up with the other Big Five ITV companies. By the following January, its profits had increased again to £21.8M. There was speculation at the time, that the technicians strike at TV-am could have spread to its operations over its plans to provide an overnight service which become fully operational by June 1988. With TVS's continuing to generate large profits, but restricted in ITV network programming, the company started to search for other investments. In 1985 it launched failed bids to acquire the French TV channel TF1 and Thorn EMI Screen entertainment. In 1986 TVS was successful in buying Midem, an organisation that promoted trade fairs, and Gilson International a Los Angeles distribution company selling programmes outside the US. TVS also acquired a 3.5% stake in Australia Network Ten company Northern Star. At the start of July 1988, speculation started to appear of a take-over bid for the American media company MTM Enterprises. By 7 July 1988, MTM was brought for £190M, which give Mary Tyler Moore 5.1% and Arthur Price, chief executive of MTM, 6.6% shares in TVS. Both agreed not to sell for a period of five years. TVS paid for the deal partly by selling 10% stakes in TVS for £29.2M each to Canal Plus and Generle D'Images, a cable television, film library and film production group, asking shareholders for £47.8M though a convertible preference share issue, with the remaining £38m taken out in a bank loan. The deal created a unique company with productions operations in Eire, UK and USA, along with a UK broadcasting franchise Uncertainty over the high price paid by TVS for MTM coupled with a collapse of a US syndication market, which affected many other US stations plus a £5.7M write-off, from the disposal of Super Channel resulted in financial instability. In January 1990, the company started searching for a buyer for a 49% stake in MTM, as part restructuring of MTM due to losses of £7.3M. A few days later, TVS confirmed profits were down 35% in 1989, which resulted in 140 UK redundancies. This was not as bad as expected since TVS has planned to eliminate 200 jobs during the summer of 1989. Ahead of the ITV franchise round, James Gatward resigned from TVS, after being informed his services were no longer required, as the board believed Gatward was not showing sufficient resolve in preparing TVS for the franchise bid. Further changes took place, with the TVS Television board being merged into the TVS Entertainment board, along with a further 100 redundancies to help strengthen the finances. In March 1991, four contenders were lined up to buy MTM, which would have seen the company being sold off around £50M, there were hopes the deal would be sorted by May before the ITV franchise application was submitted. In 1990 the new Broadcasting Act was passed by parliament, which deregulated broadcasting in the UK and removed the monopoly on programme production held by franchise holders. Changes to network broadcasting and the introduction of cable and satellite channels meant that ITV needed to be leaner and fitter to compete with its new rivals. The original draft of the Broadcasting Act stated that the applicant with the highest cash bid would win; however following fears that this would financially stretch the network and diminish programme standards the concept of a 'quality threshold' was introduced. Incumbents and applicants had to pass this first before cash bids were even considered; even then if a cash bid was deemed to impact on plans the application could be rejected. TVS passed the quality threshold – indeed, as the incumbent broadcaster it could hardly have failed to do as failure would have called the ITC's own regulatory regime into question. The lucrative nature of the TVS contract area made it one of the most desirable franchises in the UK. Despite preparing vast amounts of audience research, programming proposals and an extremely comprehensive application document for the ITC, the TVS board – now minus its founder James Gatward – calculated that it needed to outbid all opposition to retain its licence. This resulted in the "bid high or die" strategy – in which the management calculated the highest possible bid that TVS could possibly afford. The result of these calculations was a massive £59 million per annum payable for the next ten years. It was the highest bid ever made by any UK television broadcaster. The ITC announced the results of the franchise battle by releasing simultaneous faxes to the contending companies. Two companies had passed the so-called programme "quality threshold" – TVS and Meridian Broadcasting. Of these two TVS's bid was the higher – and therefore was automatically awarded the licence for the South and South East of England. However the ITC asserted that there was now a third criterion, a requirement that the ITC could confidently expect the winning company to sustain its annual payments throughout the entire period of the 10-year licence. The ITC used this to foot-fault Meridian and claimed that Meridian was disqualified for failing to pass grounds of quality. Therefore, TVS Television was reawarded the contract to serve the area from 1993. In July 1993, TVS joined up with HTV, Television South West, Channel Television and S4C to form a joint advertising company operated by TVS and HTV. Shortly after, TVS Television began to expand by buying Anglia Television, the ITV franchise for the east of England, in 1994. The following year, TVS became a major shareholder in the consortium that won the franchise for Channel 5. In 1996, TVS merged with United Newspapers (via an agreed takeover by United) to form United News & Media (UNM). The resulting company owned the Daily Express newspaper, Television South, Anglia Television, and a large shareholding (through the Yorkshire Post) in Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television, the owners of Yorkshire Television and Tyne Tees Television. The stake in Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television was sold to Granada Television, allowing them to take control of the two franchises in 1997. United News & Media later agreed to buy Scottish Television's 20% stake in HTV and on 28 June 1997, HTV was taken over fully by UNM for £370 million. In 1999, plans emerged of a merger between UNM and rival Thames Television, however these talks failed when it appeared that Television South would have to be sold off as a condition of the deal. As a result, the television assets of UNM were sold to Granada, however due to regulations stating that the company could not control that large an audience share, the broadcasting arm of HTV was sold to Thames Television in exchange for Central Independent Television's 20% stake in TVS Television. ITV TVS Television today In 2002, Granada Television and Thames Television decided to consolidate the separate brandings for the ITV franchises that they controlled, changing the name of the region to ITV TVS Television (with an alternate name ITV Television South also being used from 2004 until 2006), with the on screen name of ITV1 used before all non-regional programming. The consolidation became further pronounced when Thames Television and Granada Television merged to form ITV plc in 2004. 2004 also saw the move of ITV TVS Television from their previous Northam studio complex to a new studio base in Whiteley, Hampshire. In the subsequent years, ITV TVS Television's workforce has been condensed slowly with its operations considerably downgraded. This came to a head when Michael Grade announced his intention to reduce the number of regional programmes from 17 to nine. As part of these plans, which were approved by Ofcom in 2008, the three editions of the news programme Coast to Cost were replaced with a single edition with a pre-recorded opt out for either the South or South East of the region. The plans resulted in over half of TVS Television's existing staff being made redundant; all employees wishing to remain with the company were obliged to re-apply for jobs. Some staff opted for voluntary redundancy and many others have been left without jobs. Strike action was threatened as a result of the announcement. At present the only local programming that ITV TVS Television provides for the region is the regional news programme. In 2013 proposals were approved by Ofcom that reversed the 2009 consolidation of ITV TVS Television's regional news programmes, resulting in the reinstatement of the three sub-regions (South, East and Thames Valley). However to maintain lower costs the length of bulletins would be reduced and the main programme would be split to feature 20 minutes regional news and 10 minutes of relevant news and context from outside the region. The practice of broadcasting one programme live and pre-recording the other programmes using the same presenting team and studio set continues. Studios Northam, Southampton The Southampton base was the company's corporate headquarters and its primary production and transmission centre between the 1980s and 2004. These studios were purchased by TVS from its predecessor Southern, but TVS was delayed in the purchase of the site by Southern and therefore had to initially operate prior to launch from temporary buildings in the Southern car park, leading to Southern contemptuously naming them Portakabin TV, as referenced in a satirical song performed by Richard Stilgoe on Southern's final programme. TVS finally completed the purchase of the Southampton site, equipment, news library and staff pension fund in August 1981. Also included in the sale was land purchased by Southern for planned new studios in Maidstone. Upon purchase TVS made significant investment, including building a new scenery block to the rear of the existing site. TVS did put some studios to good use in the late 1990s and early 2000s, on some occasions, TVS would hire its studios out to the independent companies to use for the programmes, and, under the ownership of United News & Media, some Channel 5 programmes were made there. However, as a publisher-broadcaster, the facilities were generally too big for TVS Television. By 2004, ITV plc had decided that regional programming would be phased out in the years to come. In 2004, TVS closed their Northam studios and moved to a unit in a business park in Whiteley. These new headquarters at Forum One, Solent Business Park, contained a newsroom plus the main technical production and transmission arms of the programmes including three small news studios. In summer 2008, TVS Television's former studios at Southampton started to be dismantled, and it was planned to build a multi-storey block of flats. In December 2010, the site was still lying empty after developer Oakdene fell into administration in 2009. Vinters Park, Maidstone The studios to serve the eastern section of TVS's transmission area are at Vinters Park near Maidstone in Kent. The site was originally acquired by Southern Television, which had commissioned a conceptual design for new studio facilities on the site. Following the award of the franchise to TVS, Southern Television sold the site to the new company at a premium. Construction commenced in early 1982 and the first studios at the centre became operational in mid-1983. The Maidstone Studios, though significant (and home to many networked shows) are ancillary to those in Southampton which were the company's corporate headquarters until 2004. Dover The studios, on Russell Street, were originally the eastern base of Southern Television from which Scene South East and Scene Midweek were broadcast, and were essentially a news gathering operation with transmission facilities for regional news opt-outs. TVS used Dover as a regional studio for a year until completion of Vinters Park when it disposed of the site. The buildings have since been demolished and the site is now used as a car park. TVS Television Theatre TVS acquired the former Plaza Cinema in Gillingham, Kent as a stopgap measure between the commencement of broadcasting and the completion of Vinters Park. The theatre was quickly converted for television use ready for the start of broadcasting. The decision to operate a television theatre was against the trend in television at that time as both the BBC and Thames Television were to dispose of similar facilities in the following two years. Production at Gillingham was limited. It was used for several quiz shows and it was the base of the regional afternoon magazine show Not for Women Only and TVS recorded the UK inserts for Fraggle Rock there. TVS sold the theatre in 1988 to an independent production company. For a period afterwards the site was used for other activities before being demolished to make way for redevelopment. A campaign to have it listed failed as the large-scale conversion for television production had made it unsuitable for listing. Regional Offices TVS maintains small news studios in Brighton, Reading and Poole. Each studio has a single camera and a cut down version of the interview set to enable down the line interviews. These centres are each manned by a news team consisting of two reporters, a cameraman, sound man and lighting electrician with a helicopter links equipped vehicle. The studios are based in the Brighton Centre, Reading Civic Centre and Poole Arts Centre. A studio at Westminster was created for parliamentary coverage; TVS has two cameras in the basement studio of the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre in Broad Sanctuary, as well as a news crew. This facility is available for hire to other broadcasting organisations when not needed by TVS. One feature is a remote-controlled operated camera mounted on the roof of the centre, giving a clear shot of the Houses of Parliament for use as a live backdrop. In addition, TVS has sales offices in London, which was converted from a former bakery, and Manchester. Identity TVS's identity featured a six coloured symbol that formed up in three stages from the outside in before panning out and sitting alongside the TVS lettering, accompanied by a shortened version of the station theme New Forest Rondo. There were different variations for weekday and weekend, which only differed in the pan out to the lettering. The ident was shot initially in film of a mechanical model, but was later shot using video effects and from 1985, a computer generated version of the ident was used. Accompanying this ident was a clock on a black background with the six TVS colours either side, and an ident sequence following the theme 'For the best view of the South' which was used prior to the news. In September 1987, following Greg Dyke's departure from TVS, the stations presentation was completely overhauled, with the new idents designed by John Hayman and a new jingle by Ed Welch. The new idents featured metallic TVS lettering which would spin out, turning into a metallic logo before spinning back to the lettering. The rainbow colour effects are still included, which are included when the logo spins. Three versions were produced, a normal ident, a short ident where the TVS logo rotated into the lettering, and a minute extended ident featuring video from the regions that was used upon startup and in some of the longer junctions. No clock was included in the look. The idents were all against a grey gradient background and featured the caption 'Television South' below the end lettering. This change, in effect, brought a more "corporate" feel to TVS Television. This ident was altered slightly in 1989 following the TVS management restructuring, so that the ident was against a gradient blue background and cut in to the rotation of the logo into the lettering. The caption was changed to 'Television' to reflect the stations technical name of TVS Television, and the music was altered slightly to be bolder. Against the blue background, the metallic lettering now has the appearance of glass or perspex. This ident was used by TVS until they introduced another presentation package on 2nd October 1995, based around the theme of tiles. Several tiles moved around and formed one half of the "flower" logo and the company name. The break bumpers that aired during this time were the only piece of TVS presentation to use the "flower" logo in full. On 8th November 1999, TVS adopted the second generic look along with the rest of the regions, but did not use their flower logo in this look, only the text-based logo. This look was in use until October 2002 when ITV1 in England and Wales abandoned local continuity and idents. The only exception were ITV1 idents featuring the word "South of England" below the ITV1 logo, shown before regional programming. However, even this did not last, and only a few years later these regional idents were dropped. TVS for a while managed to still retain some identity, by featuring their text-based logo on the local weather forecast. However the logo was completely removed in 2004, last seen at the start of the late-night weather forecast on 5 December 2004. On 1 February 2005 it was replaced with a generic "ITV Television South" logo, the official name of the franchise. Since 2006, all idents have been generic to the entire network with no difference between regions and only the ITV1 name being used. On 14 January 2013, the station's on-air identity was changed to ITV, along with all other ITV plc-owned franchises. From September 2014 however TVS Television's identity was revived by an announcement (including the sub-region) immediately prior to the evening edition of ITV News Coast to Coast. Category:ITV logos Category:ITV Category:United News and Media Category:Granada Category:ITV plc Category:ABC Family Worldwide